My Mission

When I first started thinking about my mission, I thought about computer graphics and what I’m doing with it in graduate school. I thought about the jobs I could get with computer graphics after I graduate and what part of this could be my mission, but nothing stood out to me. I asked some peers what they thought their mission was and they responded with particular careers in graphic design that they aspired to achieve, but again this did not strike me as my mission. I love working with graphic design as well, and hope to have a great job in this field in the near future, but this will not make me feel complete. It is not my mission.
My real mission involves animals, dogs and cats in particular. Helping these animals is what really makes me feel as though I am making a difference in the world and doing what I was put on this Earth to achieve. There are many pet owners out there that love their animals and take great care of them. Those animals do not need my help. The animals that my mission focuses on are the homeless dogs and cats, either out on the streets or locked up in animal shelters. My mission is to do what I can to help take care of these animals while they are still in the shelters and to help find them permanent, loving homes.
So far, I have worked towards my mission by volunteering at animal shelters and adopting stray dogs and cats. Until now, I have never really thought about how I can combine my mission and my skills in technology. I have already completed a few projects where I have advocated pet health and safety with my graphics skills, but I didn’t about how I could continue this work in my future. For a video editing class, we had a project that was to create a pretend public service announcement. I took some video of my own beagle and added text and music. The end result was a short clip that gave statistics about the number of homeless dogs and cats and how this overpopulation could be stopped by spaying and neutering pets. For another class, I created a 3-D animation that showed the cycle of a heartworm infection and how it is spread from one animal to another. This animation was to advocate giving dogs heartworm pills every month as a preventative. These projects could be used outside of the classroom to promote animal wellbeing. They could be broadcast on television as a real public service announcement and uploaded onto veterinary websites to explain why it is important to buy heartworm pills.
So, now that I am thinking about how to combine my technology skills and my mission, the possibilities seem endless. There are so many educational videos and animations that could be created to help keep pet overpopulation down and promote the adoption of homeless animals. These can be posted on numerous websites and other digital media to make them available for the public to view.
My skills can also be used to help in creating the websites themselves, which brings me to my examples of how technology is already being used to factor into my mission. There are two specific websites that I visit frequently and that have to do with finding pets homes and overall pet wellbeing.
The first is called Petfinder.com. This is a website that anyone can go to if they are looking to adopt a homeless animal. They type in information, such as the type of animal, their location, and the age and size of the animal they wish to adopt. Petfinder then presents them with a list of animals that meet their criteria along with descriptions of the animal and where it is currently living. This website makes it easy for shelters and rescue groups to advertise what animals are up for adoption and allows them to reach people who might not have stopped by the physical location of the shelter otherwise.
The second website is called The Animal Rescue Site (theanimalrescuesite.com) and is part of a larger website called the Greater Good. This website is able to donate money to shelters and rescue groups through sponsors advertising on the pages. They also sell a wide range of products and for each product sold a portion of the proceeds are also donated. The Animal Rescue Site also supports petitions dealing with animal welfare and keeps an updated list of petitions that visitors to the website can view and sign.
I think that these two websites are a great example of how our current technology is being used to help animals and I hope that I can contribute to this trend in my future. I’m not sure exactly what I will do yet, but I feel more confident now that I am focusing my thoughts in the right direction.